Normally at Christ our Hope our Sunday worship consists of the ancient Christian liturgy ornamented with a blend of musical styles. Some very old hymns and some of the best worship music that was written just recently. We work very hard at keeping that balance of "ancient-future" worship. But yesterday for the first Sunday of Advent we began our liturgy by chanting the Great Litany. To be honest I was a little nervous (not only because I was doing a lot of the chanting solo) because I was not sure how it would be received or if it would make our worship seem too formal or stuffy. However, by the end I was so glad we had gone ahead with it. I got positive feedback (some of it from visitors even) and it seemed like a perfect beginning to the Advent season.

I am very excited that this week Christ Our Hope will hold its first ever Advent Hope Market. We have already begun talking about how this year we desire to live differently and celebrate Christmas differently than the typical consumerist culture around us. Toward that end we have been encouraging everyone to get their Christmas shopping done early so that we can focus on Advent. And we have also encouraged everyone to give gifts intentionally and thoughtfully this year. To help give resources toward this second end one of our members had a vision for what has become the Advent Hope Market. This Sunday after worship members of COH and members of the community whom we have invited will have a chance to shop for gifts that make a difference. We will have a selection of beautiful silk products from Cambodia that were made by at-risk women, bead necklaces from Uganda made by HIV widows, our own Land of a Thousand Hills fair-trade coffee that benefits reconciliation projects in Rwanda, hand crafts made by Romanian orphans and amazing woodwork made by a local quadriplegic man. I can't tell you how excited I am - this is truly going to be an opportunity to give more. It is a win-win-win situation. The artisans win because all of these products are fairly traded and give the producers a living wage. The buyer wins because they get the satisfaction of knowing that their purchase makes a difference. And the recipients of these gifts will win because - well these things are awesome, one of a kind gifts that will show thoughtfulness and intentionality. And we would all take that over a gift card any day!

"As a good Christian should consider every place as holy, because God is there, so he should look upon every part of his life as a matter of holiness, because it is to be offered to God."